Born out of their common experience when visiting hospitals between June and August 2016, its four founders came up with the Medika platform comprising Medika app and Medika Connect to ease the queuing and registering process at hospitals or clinics.

“We think that tech in healthcare has not been utilised to the maximum to improve the process of seeing a doctor. All industries can be helped by technology, including healthcare services,” says PT Medika Cipta Digital chief executive officer and founder Danang Y. Firdaus at a press conference.

Medika App will allow users to search for doctors, hospitals, and clinics based on their location, make an online appointment, get information on health and beauty through the platform’s blog feature, and enjoy various promotions from their partners.

When booking an appointment with a doctor, users can fill up the forms and documents through the app as well as choose their preferred doctor, date, and time. The booking process is connected to Medika Connect and this information will be received by the relevant provider. Users will receive a response within 30 minutes.

“Our purpose is to make it easy and simple for our users. To complete the registering process is not easy and it often takes some time, which is why we encourage users to complete it when they are healthy and have downloaded the app.

“We give priority to our users by providing a 30-minute guarantee of response from the hospital or clinic. Users can then visit the doctor based on the scheduled appointment time without the hassle of registering at the hospital,” Danang adds.

Medika currently has over 40 partners including beauty and dental clinics. The service is currently only available in Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi (Jabodetabek).

“We want to focus on these areas and find the right partners to improve our services first,” he says.

Bridging partners to users

One of Medika’s partners, Columbia Asia Hospital general manager Jacky Arjono says, “Technology now can help to bridge doctors and patients. Even though our customers can book an appointment or make inquiries through email and phone calls, it is still difficult due to the long response time.

“Medika app comes at the right time and offers solutions. That is why we decided to build a partnership with them.”

He believes that this partnership will help Columbia Asia Hospital to build brand awareness and benefit users by offering seamless interaction as well as enabling them to obtain health services from the hospital along with information.

“Health stakeholders can see Medika app as ‘agent of change’ in the health services industry,” he adds.

Challenges in the future

Still in the process of bootstrapping, Danang finds obtaining the right partners and educating users a challenge.

“When it comes to partners, we want a long-term partnership so that our users will be provided with better and varied health services. In order to educate users, we can set up booths or run promotions via our partners,” he says.

For now, the business to business (B2B) model’s revenue comes from partners. In future, revenue may also come promotions running on the Medika app.

“Now we are focusing on the process of how users can meet doctors faster. We want to develop the business with our partners first and we aim to obtain 100 partners by the end of this year,” he explains.

PT Medika Cipta Digital commissioner and founder Danung S. Wicaksono says that this platform targets users between the ages of 20 to 40.

“On Medika app, users can pre-load data for a whole family so it will make it easy for them,” he says.

With an undisclosed amount of investment, Danung believes that the Medika app will keep developing and they will ensure that all features meet user needs.

“We want to make sure that our users are happy using our platform. By developing and controlling the quality of the app, the business will grow,” he concludes.